Are you sure? I thought this, too, but just checked out my home state's University (Minnesota). It's a typical big state school and tuition and fees for 4 years are pushing $45K. I was surprised because I assumed total tuition was closer to $30K.

Texas at least. tuition at the University of Texas is $4600 a semester full time. Pretty much every public university in Texas is about the same or better.

I had people from out of state going to my school, because they said it was cheaper for them to pay out of state tuition there than any of their state schools.

Shepherd University/semester (09 to 10)

  IN-STATE Tuition and Fees	$ 2,617.00	
  OUT-OF-STATE Tuition and Fees	$ 6,787.00
  + (optional)
  Room	1,945.00
  Board  (19 Meal Plan)	1,669.00

So four years instate would be 21k + books (excluding normal living expenses.)

University of Kansas clocks in at $29k for four years; UIC in Chicago is about $25k (plus some fees that might bring it closer to 30). UMN does appear to be pretty expensive relative to other schools for in-state tuition, but it's a quite reputable school so maybe they've earned a premium.

Hm. When I look at UIC's tuition calculator, it's giving me $6757 per semester for undergrad engineering tuition and fees per semester. Over 8 semesters, that's ~54K. Other departments are slightly cheaper but all were over $6K/semester.

http://www.uic.edu/depts/oar/undergrad/tuition_undergrad.htm...

When I revisited UMN, it is $4200/semester... but that seems to be without fees.

http://onestop.umn.edu/finances/costs_and_tuition/tuition_an...

I first saw the UMN tuition on this site, which calculates it for the year:

http://www.getreadyforcollege.org/sPagesGR/TuitionChart.cfm?...

That's more time than I really wanted to spend on this topic, but I do find it interesting that even state schools can cost way more than I would have suspected.